Photographed by: John G. Zimmerman/SI
Turia Mau presented a whole other level of exoticism when she was featured on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue on January 15, 1968. Caribbean, Mexican, and bi-coastal travel were the locations chosen for the first few issues, and they were approachable to the travelers of that decade. But Bora Bora, as modeled by an Asian French Polynesian woman? That was a land far, far away from home.
Turia caught the eye of SI editor Jule Campbell when she was crowned Miss Bastille Day in Tahiti in 1965. So the crew was shipped to the South Pacific to capture Turia modeling that Rudi Gernreich-designed black wool swimsuit in the water. Truly an action shot, Turia wrung out her hair and it was that photograph that landed on the cover.
So what became of her modeling career? “Nothing,” she told SI in 1989. She was unmarried and 26-year-old at the time of the cover shoot, but soon after married a wealthy and well-traveled Swiss public works engineer who built her a house on a hill in the suburban area of Papeete in the South Pacific. She remains today as exotic, far away, and mysterious as she did then.
